What do Baotou people mean by walking to the west entrance?

"Walking to the West Gate" is an ancient Shanxi folk song. It is said that it has been circulating for one or two hundred years. This song can be sung not only by people in Shanxi, but also in neighboring Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi, and even further afield in Ningxia, Qinghai, and Gansu.

There is an old saying in China called "Ten miles have different sounds", which means that folk songs have strong regional characteristics. The reason why people in many places in the northwest sing "Go to the West Gate" is probably because many Shanxi people had been to these places at that time, and some of them had been singing this song. Over time, the locals also learned it. . Baotou is now one of the largest cities on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, with a population of over two million. More than a hundred years ago, this was just a small village called Baoketu. Baotou people said that because Shanxi people came here to do business, the prototype of today's Baotou City was gradually formed. Now there is a saying in Baotou City that "first there was Fusheng Gong, and then there was Baotou City." Fu Sheng Gong is the name of a business opened by a Shanxi businessman named Qiao more than a hundred years ago. Shanxi, many local chronicles of the Ming and Qing dynasties also mentioned the experience of Shanxi people going to the northwest to make a living. Because so many people have had this experience, it has become a custom in some places.

The "Taigu County Chronicle" records that people in Taigu County "are good at making a living apart from farming, and it is common for them to travel thousands of miles."

"Yu County Chronicles" said that "I often serve people far away, even if they are thousands of miles away."

"Shouyang County Chronicle" said that the villagers "were half of those who traded in the southern part of Yan and the northern part of the Saibei".

Interview with Liang Xiaomin, professor at Beijing Technology and Business University

Q: When do people from Shanxi take the West Exit?

Answer: It probably started in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, so the deadline was probably at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The climax should be at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, when the number was the largest.

Question: What does it mean to take the west exit?

Answer: It should have lasted for nearly three hundred years, and it should be said that there were two situations when taking the west exit. One situation is that because Shanxi had a relatively large population at that time, life was more difficult. So what? Population emigration, this is part of the population. Another part of the people were due to the need for border defense in Inner Mongolia at that time, so Shanxi merchants developed in the middle of the Ming Dynasty to meet the needs of border defense in Inner Mongolia. Then some people go to the west entrance just to adapt to this requirement and develop commerce and trade outside the entrance, so that they can later get tickets. Therefore, the phenomenon of taking the West Exit is actually a part of Chinese immigration.

Nowadays, living standards have improved, and people who used to go out from the West Exit have embarked on the road to find their roots and visit their ancestors! In Hequ County, Shanxi Province, the "Xikou Ancient Ferry", the only way to go to the West Exit, is still intact. The folk songs of the Xikou era are also passed down to this day, and are called "Er-person Stage". Listening to the Er-ren Taiwan, it is not difficult to understand the sadness of not walking to the West Gate back then!